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Capitalism: Economic Inequality In The United States

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What is capitalism? Capitalism is like a long and extensive game of Monopoly. When the game starts everyone has the same amount of money, but the objective is for there to be one person on top, and that person controls the supply and trade of those services. According to Oxford Dictionary, capitalism is “an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state (Oxford, 2016).” Capitalism can be viewed as a monopoly and/or a free market. However, no matter how you view capitalism it involves unfair taxing, inequality levels that date back to the beginning of The Great Depression, and wealth fluctuations between least and most paid companies. Although, American capitalism has been known to guide …show more content…

In the the mid-20th century wealthy Americans paid about 91% of income tax in America. Nevertheless, today the wealthy only pay 43.4% of the total income tax (National Economic Council, 2014). To place this in perspective the richest 1% of people in America own about 35% of the nation’s total wealth. The top 1% are going to pay an income tax of about 24.7% of their total income, while someone making around $45,000 is going to pay 19.7% of their total income (Americans For Tax Fairness, 2015). Nonetheless, the richest 400 Americans as of 2009 only paid an income tax of 20%. Why are working class Americans paying about the same percentage of income tax as upper class Americans? Some might say that this is fair, due to the fact that they are paying the same ratio. But, what about that small family living in the south of Chicago surviving paycheck to paycheck? Or the coal miner in Philadelphia providing for his wife and two children? The single mother who works 10 hour shifts and can not afford daycare for her daughter? This is what that $8,000 or so forth of taxes can benefit these families

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